


Brisance

by joosetta



Category: Katekyou Hitman Reborn
Genre: Angst, M/M, Romance, Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-03-17
Updated: 2011-03-17
Packaged: 2017-10-17 01:47:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,157
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/171668
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/joosetta/pseuds/joosetta
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Brisance is a measure of the rapidity with which an explosive develops its maximum pressure." i.e. the one where Gokudera's apartment blows up.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Brisance

Gokudera should have known better. Or something. It had taken him a while and some hints from Reborn to get set up with suppliers in Japan, but even then no-questions-asked nitroglycerin was hard to come by, and he liked to make his own shit.

That was part of the whole process, bent over a table with sweat and a headache stinging in his eyes, working with crap that might kill him, but definitely would kill other people, and that was the point. Gokudera liked getting his hands dirty, and if that was fucked up, then what about his life wasn’t?

So he probably should have known better. It was easy enough to get the white stuff, there was fertiliser wherever you went, and maybe it was kind of safer, what with how nitroglycerin got when you left it alone for too long, but Gokudera had been making bombs long enough to be a connoisseur about these things.

He got himself some dodgy shit to begin with, and then he left it a bit too long while he was out tolerating the baseball asshole just to keep Tsuna happy, and when he came back his apartment actually _wasn’t there_. What was there was a big smoking hole and a ton of firemen.

Gokudera was kind of glad that the nitro was all he had left stashed there, because otherwise he might have been answering some really awkward questions. As it happened Reborn was sixteen steps ahead of everyone, and apparently there was already a suspect, some Carcassa guy Tsuna had been struggling to get rid of without killing him.

Now he was in jail, and all their problems had been solved, except for the fact that Gokudera had nowhere to live.

Yamamoto stepped up, like he always did. Gokudera wondered if it was some kind of pavlovian _thing_ for him, see a mound, step up before it. Gokudera vindictively wanted to see a problem Yamamoto couldn’t send sailing like a high speed pitch.

“You can stay with me,” he said, smiling some big, dumb as shit smile that transformed his whole face. “I’ve got a spare bed, Dad won’t mind.”

“Good,” Reborn said, and Gokudera actually had no fucking say in the matter, at all.

\---

Yamamoto had practise that evening, which he was attending despite all the drama of Gokudera’s apartment exploding. His Dad was out of town on some sushi related thing that Gokudera didn’t want to think hard about because Yamamoto senior actually annoyed Gokudera more than his son did, which was a damn miracle.

The whole thing amounted to Yamamoto having the only key, and Gokudera having to sit in the stands and wait while he trained for a tedious sum of hours under the floodlights. When he was done his dark hair was plastered to his head with sweat, and he looked pretty disgusting, the skin of his bare arms glistening as he plucked his damp shirt away from the sticky skin of his chest.

“Just need a shower,” he told Gokudera as the rest of the team filed off, the diamond looking far more regal without them scattered across it. Gokudera glared at Yamamoto, hoping it might get across to him how annoying it was to sit in a muggy arena all evening watching people hit shit with wooden bats and run around like idiots, but as usual Yamamoto just grinned.

He took his time showering, emerging with his hair rumpled and his sports bag thrown over one shoulder, long arms and legs carefree and liquid. Gokudera could see the kind of satisfied weariness in him that came from simple physical exertion, and felt strangely jealous. Gokudera was still wired up from too many cups of coffee at the police station, all the cigarettes he had smoked while he sat outside and watched firemen trying to save the gutted matchbox that had once been his apartment.

It wasn’t as if Gokudera had any emotional attachment to the place, but the indignity and inconvenience of being homeless because of his own stupidity only made him more pissed off. He was sweaty too, and Yamamoto smelled like soap and clean water, fresh and cheerful.

“Oh, I’m hungry now,” Yamamoto said, leading Gokudera towards his house. He had barely towel dried his hair, and droplets of water were running down his neck. Gokudera wanted to ask how Yamamoto survived, being so carefree. How was it that everyone seemed to rely on this idiot, who couldn’t even groom himself. How had Gokudera ended up relying on him?

“I don’t want sushi,” Gokudera grumbled, and Yamamoto just laughed.

\---

They didn’t have sushi, which was a relief. Yamamoto’s house was modest, the little lounge area separated from the restaurant by a curtain and nothing else, the rest of the house laid out like boxes side by side, small and cluttered with useless things.

Yamamoto turned the TV on but didn’t pay it much attention, pushing stuff off the low table so they could spread out their takeaway. Shigure kintoki was propped against the far wall, just the sort of careless place an idiot like Yamamoto would keep a priceless weapon. Gokudera ground his teeth and dug into his food silently.

Surprise surprise, Yamamoto watched baseball, and cheerfully chatted on about the scores and the players and the league as if Gokudera knew what he was on about. When the game ended, he flipped over to a drama and left that on. Gokudera finally understood why Yamamoto was the way he was - television; it was official, it rotted the brain.

It was only when he was finished with his food and thinking of a shower before bed that Gokudera remembered that he had no clothes now, all of his Armani was gone, the vintage Vivienne Westwood belt he spent a months allowance on, his custom sneakers, the black wool long coat he had bought in Milan a month before he left Italy, still not worn on japanese soil, smelling like the smoke and coffee of his last Italian winter.

Gokudera wasn’t fond of crying, but sitting on Yamamoto’s lumpy couch with some inane drama on the TV and _all his clothes gone_ he very nearly did.

He felt a sudden weight on his shoulder, warm and heavy, Yamamoto’s hand.

“Hey I’m sorry about your apartment,” he said genuinely. It was like, 5 hours of baseball, baseball and bad television too late, and it was Yamamoto, so Gokudera decided not to take the apology gracefully.

“Oh thanks very much, your apology replaces all of my lost belongings,” he snapped, cracking the wooden chopstick between his fingers. “I feel much better now.”

Yamamoto’s hand didn’t move, he just left it lying there and Gokudera shrugged it off roughly. On the TV a woman was comically riding a bicycle, weaving through traffic and shrieking. Her laughter only pissed Gokudera off more, and he clenched his fists on his knees.

“Do you want to use the bath?” Yamamoto asked lightly, stacking up the takeaway cartons and licking sauce from his thumb. He seemed totally unruffled by the whole situation, and not for the first time, Gokudera wished he could get a reaction out of him. It happened, sometimes; rarely. Gokudera had seen Yamamoto’s face shutter up with anger once before and it had been worth the wait.

Gokudera still thought about it sometimes, and it gave him a little thrill, deep in his gut. That was the problem with Yamamoto now. He was as dumb and annoying and ever present as before, but now Gokudera _knew_ he could be interesting, even for a moment, and it just made it so much worse.

“Yes,” he grumbled. “Thanks for _finally_ offering.”

Yamamoto laughed at that like it was the most hilarious thing in the world.

\---

Yamamoto had the futon rolled out by the time Gokudera was finished, and it almost took up the whole floor of his little room. Gokudera had only been in there once before, and it was just as he remembered it, nauseatingly boyish, decorated with team pennants and scattered clothes.

“I need a cigarette,” Gokudera said, fingering the last one in his pocket. Goddamnit, he had lost a whole carton in the fire. Yamamoto opened the window obligingly, and sat next to Gokudera on the bed as he smoked out into the night.

“I got something for you to sleep in,” Yamamoto said, sitting way too close, close enough to be a warmth against Gokudera’s side. What was that about anyway? Just another thing Gokudera had learned to put up with, Yamamoto’s insistence on invading his personal space, like annoying Gokudera from a distance wasn’t bad enough. Weren’t Japanese people supposed to be reticent about this shit, culturally?

Something for Gokudera to sleep in turned out to be a well worn white T-shirt, soft at the neck from repeated washing, and a pair of shorts in about the same condition. They were long enough on Gokudera to cover his knees, as if the indignity of being homeless wasn’t quite enough, now he had to be _small_ and homeless.

“Suits you,” Yamamoto said, strangely, as Gokudera rolled himself up in the duvet. If he hadn’t been so tired and annoyed and confused, Gokudera might have told Yamamoto exactly what he thought of that, but instead he just closed his eyes, aiming for stony silence, and instead just falling asleep.

\---

 

Yamamoto was one of those people that put more effort into fidgeting than thinking when they had homework to do. It drove Gokudera crazy, all the fiddling and twitching and twisting of paper. Gokudera thought homework was stupid, and school even more so, but he did both because it helped the Tenth, and it wasn't as if he found all this middle school level maths difficult. Yamamoto, on the other hand, was as dumb as a baby and twice as annoying, and spent most of his assigned homework time staring blankly at his textbook and spinning his pen on one finger.

“I'm done,” Gokudera announced pointedly. They were propped around the table in Yamamoto's lounge, and Gokudera could hear Yamamoto's father entertaining customers from beyond the curtain, the swift noise of his knives cutting up the cheerful blare of his conversation. Gokudera hated staying in this house, he really did.

“Haha, wow! That was fast.” Yamamoto didn't ask for help, or even act like he was struggling, but Gokudera could see his answer, and it wasn't even in the same sphere as right.

He was still spinning the pen, big fingers surprisingly nimble. Sometimes Gokudera forgot that this goofy jock was the same guy who could pass his sword from hand to hand mid strike, who could lunge so fast with his blade you couldn't even see him until it was too late. Gokudera felt a rush of something as he thought about how Yamamoto could be- how Yamamoto _was_ in a fight. It was like the intent of competition, the necessity of survival, they honed him down into something sharper, a tempered blade.

Gokudera looked at the lines of him, the swell of hard muscle beneath his plain, comfortable clothes, the way his lips were working as he read the textbook, whispering to himself.  God, Gokudera didn't know what to make of this idiot, didn't know whether to be proud or infuriated by him, and living in his house didn't help. Gokudera kept watching the pen between Yamamoto's  
fingers, spinning, spinning.

“Hey I guess I'm done,” Yamamoto said eventually, closing the book. Gokudera wasn't sure he wanted to know what abysmal answers Yamamoto had come up with this time. Yamamoto yawned, extending his long arms above his head, stretching the soft fabric of his T-shirt across his chest and belly. Gokudera looked away. He needed a cigarette, and a lobotomy, maybe. “You've got that look again,” Yamamoto added. “Like you need a cigarette really badly.”

Gokudera was mildly horrified that he was so transparent that Yamamoto could read him, but then that was another thing, wasn't it? It was like Yamamoto was some emotionally psychic savant, who with one oblivious comment could cut right to the heart of everything. Gokudera huffed, rummaging in his pocket and heading over to the window. It was still raining outside, and he hid his head beneath the shutters, only his nose and the cigarette clamped between his lips in any danger of getting wet. Yamamoto had opened up a baseball magazine, and was lounging against the sofa, reading intently, hair falling in his eyes. He was moving his lips again, and Gokudera found himself watching, despite himself.

“Stop that,” Gokudera said eventually, because it was actually easier to order Yamamoto about than it was to control his own wayward impulses.

“Stop what?”

“The lip thing! Stop mumbling as you read. Most people learned not to do that when they were 4 years old.”

Yamamoto looked confused,  glancing back down at the magazine and then up to Gokudera again.

“I move my lips?”

“Yes,” Gokudera snapped, shaking the ash from his cigarette grumpily. “And it's annoying as hell so just stop it.”

“Mm,” Yamamoto said, going back to his magazine. Gokudera knew what that “Mm” meant, he was beginning to recognise it now. It was the noise Yamamoto made when he was planning on ignoring you, but was too polite to say so. Just like everything else about Yamamoto, it pissed Gokudera off to the nth degree, and he had to fight the urge to lash out, pin Yamamoto down, give his frustration shape and purpose.

Gokudera turned around quickly, slumping back out of the window to finish smoking. The rain was a hiss on the pavement outside, and Gokudera wondered if he was going mad, and whether the insurance company would cover that too.

\---

Gokudera wasn’t a morning person, and it seemed, in his lifelong quest to be as irritating as possible, Yamamoto was. He flopped out of bed at 6 am sharp every morning, stomping about his room as he went to get washed and dressed, narrowly missing standing on Gokudera’s face every time he crossed over the futon.

“Stop it , for fucks sake,” Gokudera snapped, as Yamamoto nearly kicked him again. Yamamoto  
glanced down and his eyes widened in surprise.

“Oh hey, you’re awake. I thought you were still sleeping.”

Yamamoto was shirtless still, his white school shirt fisted in one hand, water glistening on his bare skin. Something about it made Gokudera’s throat tighten and suddenly he was angry; furious.

“Get out of the way,” he snapped, standing and pushing out of the room, before Yamamoto could do anything more to frustrate him.

 

\---

At school it was only worse. A few days of sleeping with Yamamoto’s even, steady breathing, a few days squeezing past him in the narrow corridor of his house, had only made things more difficult. Now when Yamamoto was asked a question in class and answered wrong with a blinding, ignorant grin, Gokudera had to fight not to push out of his seat and lunge at him.

Now when Yamamoto slung a casual arm across his shoulder and Tsuna’s too, Gokudera had to battle not to shove him away, gritting his teeth hard enough to make his jaw ache. It was too much.

Gokudera cut his last class, because he wasn’t sure he could take it much longer. He emptied his school locker of every stick of dynamite he had and took the road up out of town. There was a strip of unused land up there, bracketed with hollow, deserted buildings, shop windows with the glass knocked out of them. No-one could hear the explosions up here, and the ground was already pitted and black from all of Gokudera’s previous training.

Blowing shit up was cathartic for anyone, but Gokudera liked to blow things up with a bit more skill and precision than most people. When he was alone with the empty space all to himself, concentrating on his work was an escape. With so much to think about; the timing and whisper of fuses burning, the precision of aim and speed, all of these thoughts filled him up and crowded out all the rest.

Gokudera forgot about Yamamoto for a while.

He was trying something new, using the flame of the dying will to light the fuses, mixing up the speed and pattern of his throws. If he just timed it right - just right, and everything was perfect, Gokudera knew that the explosion would do something beautiful.

It took hours, until the sun was low in the sky and Gokudera’s eyes were watering from the smoke and the acrid stink of explosives. The timing was the most important thing, the swift burning dying will flame was fickle, and Gokudera wasn’t used to channelling it , but if he got it right, the explosions rippled across the air, one after another, like a destructive chain reaction, closing in on any target from all angles.

It was perfect. Gokudera was smarting from the heat, and his ears were ringing, but he couldn’t help grinning.

“I’m glad you skipped class for something constructive,” it was Reborn, Tsuna following a few feet behind. “That might be a useful technique.”

“Wow,” Tsuna was peering around at the deserted lot, edging over to one of the craters, still smoking from the recent explosion. “Isn’t this kind of dangerous?”

“Tenth!” Gokudera bellowed, waving his arm. It didn’t matter at all that he had to go and sleep in Yamamoto’s pokey little room this evening, not now that he had achieved something on his own, something Yamamoto had no part in. This was who Gokudera really was, explosions, raw power, the elegance of physics made brutal.

\---

“Hey! What are you doing?” Yamamoto was back from practice, damp from his shower, face flushed red. Gokudera rolled over and closed his eyes.

“I'm having a nap,” on your bed, he didn't add, because that was obvious. The futon was rolled up in the corner, and Gokudera had been blowing things up all evening, he was tired.  It was the good kind of tired though, the kind that came from sorting a problem out; mastering something after many attempts. Perseverance was something Gokudera had learned to savour. It was a quality that was important in both mathematics and in using explosives. You had to hang in while things kept going wrong, keep your grip until they finally went right. Gokudera was getting good at that.

“Haha!” Yamamoto tossed down his bag, and then joined Gokudera, flopping down beside him on the narrow bed as if it was a perfectly normal thing to do. There wasn't much space, and Gokudera felt the length of Yamamoto pressing against his side, warm and smelling like that stupid sports shower gel he used. “I heard you developed a new technique, I can't wait to see.”

“Who told you?” Gokudera murmured, shifting just enough that they had some more room, slowly feeling comfortable again.

“I saw Tsuna and Reborn on the way here, Reborn seemed pretty pleased.”

“How can you tell?” As far as Gokudera was concerned Reborn only seemed to have two visible emotions, lethal and slightly more lethal.

“He was smiling.” Yamamoto laughed, as if Gokudera was the most hilarious guy in the world for not being able to discern between Reborn's enigmatically murderous smile and his enigmatically pleased one. Gokudera hated Yamamoto, hated how warm he was on the bed, how comfortable it was to just lie there and not get into an argument. It just wasn't fair. Gokudera  felt as if he had finally just been dealt a good hand, then the table was upended and Yamamoto ended  
up with all the cards.

“I don't like you,” Gokudera grouched, trying to be as dignified as anyone could be after being caught napping on someone else's bed, wearing someone else's too large clothes, and probably sporting bed hair. “Just so you know.”

“I know,” Yamamoto said oddly, curling his arms behind his head as a pillow. He didn't elaborate, and when Gokudera propped himself up to check, Yamamoto was fast asleep. His face looked- he was so calm in sleep, mouth curved in a smile, eyelashes dark against his cheek. How the hell did he do that? Make life look so easy, when Gokudera knew exactly how hard it was.

\---

Tsuna visited the next evening, one of the visits he made when his guilt got the better of him and he needed to see if everyone was ok. Gokudera loved him for it, for how conscientious he was without even trying. That was why he was the boss, Vongola tenth, because he cared too much about his people, his family.

“What's it like living with Yamamoto?” he asked, peering about. Gokudera knew he was imagining doing it himself, putting himself in Gokudera's shoes. Tsuna was always thinking about how others felt and saw things, almost to a fault.

“Loud,” Gokudera answered, because it was, especially with Mr. Yamamoto's frequent impassioned speeches, and the stream of chattering customers. “I eat a lot of sushi now too.”

“Lucky,'” Tsuna tugged at the neck of his too-large sweater, glancing about nervously “Reborn has me on a special bulking up diet.”

Gokudera wasn't sure if he could imagine a bulked up Tsuna. There was something about his fragility that matched his character perfectly, his burning determination flickering like a flame in a frail paper lantern. He didn't say that though, because Tsuna was looking forlornly at his thin wrists, no doubt thinking something stupid, like he wasn't the best person in the whole world.

“You don't need to bulk up, Tenth,” Gokudera said, trying to sound encouraging, “You're wiry and lean, that's way better than all muscly and stupid.”

Tsuna didn't look convinced.

“The more muscles the less brain power,” Gokudera continued, “Look at that Yamamoto! All he is is muscle.”

"I don't have brain power either,” Tsuna said, dubiously, but he sounded a little better. Right on cue, Yamamoto ducked through from the restaurant and flopped into the sofa beside Tsuna, kicking out his long legs and grinning cheerfully.

“Tsuna! Where's the little guy?”

“Shh!” Tsuna hissed, glancing around. “If he finds me he'll make me drink another protein smoothie.”

Yamamoto laughed, like Tsuna's suffering was just a big massive joke, and, inexplicably, got back up on his feet, scrubbing his hand through his hair. “Oh hey -you want to stay for some food?”

“Yes!” Tsuna blurted. “Yes, yes please.”

Gokudera watched Yamamoto stride off to the restaurant, sweatpants hanging loose over his bare feet.

“It must be nice,” Tsuna said, peering through at the kitchen, “living here with Yamamoto. My house is so busy.”

Gokudera glowered as he thought of all the people who were taking advantage of Tsuna's good nature and staying with him. That shitty cow, and the stinky baby, and countless other Vongola freeloaders coming and going.

Gokudera really thought about it for a moment, and it hurt to admit, but living with Yamamoto _was_ nice. Yamamoto and his father lived a simple life, sushi and baseball and easy conversation, no shouting or arguing, nothing hidden under the surface. It was strangely nice to eat across from someone in the morning, nice to fall asleep to the steady murmur of someone else breathing. It was nice to see Yamamoto when he woke up in the morning, to listen to his mumbling conversation just before sleep claimed him at night. Gokudera liked Yamamoto, he realised, horrified - he liked him a lot; every dumb, muscled inch of him.

“What's wrong?” Tsuna yelped. “Yamamoto! I think Gokudera's having an aneurysm !”

“Hahaha! He always looks like that!” Yamamoto was framed in the door through to the restaurant, light glowing through on the lines of his shoulders, catching his hair in feathers and sparks around his ears. Gokudera felt something crumple up inside him, and he realised that he wasn’t going to be the same now, after this.

\---

The insurance company informed Gokudera that his new apartment would be ready in two days and he celebrated by going out and burning cash on a new wardrobe, trying his best to replace all his irreplaceable designer outfits with poor high street copies. He felt better anyway, out of Yamamoto’s baggy clothes, and into a pair of grey jeans that fit properly, a shirt with a collar that was snug around his neck instead of loose.

He propped himself outside Yamamoto’s house once he was dressed, and smoked three cigarettes in a row, chain smoking the way he always did when he was nervous. It was a good thing he had an apartment, it was _more_ than a good thing that he only had a few days longer to survive living at Yamamoto’s. Everything was fixed, no more indignity, no more sushi, no more Yamamoto.

Gokudera huffed, frustrated with himself, because despite all that, he was still nervous and oddly disappointed. He could hear customers chatting inside, and Yamamoto’s cheerful voice rising and falling. After a moment, Gokudera heard the door slide open, and Yamamoto came out, bare feet shuffling on the paving.

“Hey, there you are,” he said, flipping a dish cloth over one shoulder. “Dad said you were smoking out here.”

“I have an apartment,” Gokudera said. He hadn’t exactly counted on telling Yamamoto straight out or whatever, but then the idea of planning how to ‘break the news’ pissed him off so much that he supposed that would have to do. Who cared what Yamamoto thought anyway? The guy was so dumb he probably didn’t have enough brain space left to process the whole episode.

“Huh? Really?” Yamamoto took a seat with his usual disregard for the personal space bubble, barely a foot between him and Gokudera. “That sucks, I really liked having you here.”

There was something about the way he phrased that - _having you here_ , that made Gokudera bristle, fingers tightening into a fist. Yamamoto didn’t have him, couldn’t have him, would never have him. Gokudera was his own man, and somewhere in between relying on Yamamoto for a bed at night, and spending every breathing moment with him, Gokudera seemed to have forgotten that. It was embarrassing, that here Yamamoto was sitting too close, talking about _having_ him.

There was nothing for Yamamoto to _have_ , here or anywhere.

“Whatever. I’m fucking glad to be out of here, no more stupid sushi and crappy baseball.”

Yamamoto was silent for a long moment, and Gokudera was suddenly frightened to look at him. He might have hit the jackpot, might have finally driven Yamamoto to anger again, but he was too much of a coward to check.

Yamamoto’s arm settled heavy over his shoulders.

“Haha, wow,” he said, voice close and warm ”You’re so rude.”

Gokudera wanted to do a lot of things at that moment. He kind of wanted to smack Yamamoto, right in his cheerful face, wipe the smile from it. He kind of wanted to grab him and shake him, ask him if he knew what the hell he was doing. He kind of wanted to get close, then closer.

“Gokudera?” Yamamoto said, as if somehow he had sensed the change in mood. Gokudera took a long steadying breath, then pushed away, shoving Yamamoto back hard enough that he tipped over and fell in the flower bed.

\---

Gokudera had slept in bus shelters before. He had even slept in worse, curled up in doorways with his hands tucked into his pockets, wedged between sodden cardboard boxes with a black bag as a raincoat. Gokudera had slummed it before, on another continent, a long time ago, but he still worked better with a king size bed and eight hundred thread-count sheets. Where possible.

Still, bus shelters in Japan were a lot more hospitable than those in Italy, and if he tucked himself in the corner, away from the glare of the street lamp, it actually wasn’t even that cold.

He didn’t sleep though, just pulled his hood over his face and smoked through the opening, until he didn’t have any cigarettes, and his fingers were numb with the cold. Gokudera thought about Yamamoto as he did, and really let himself think; the way he never had before.

He thought about the way Yamamoto’s skin looked when he was wet from the shower, and the way his dark hair feathered at the nape of his neck. He thought about Yamamoto warm and close to him, the two of them lying side by side on a bed or slumped next to each other on a sofa.

Gokudera thought about wearing Yamamoto’s clothes, the soft, shapeless stretch of them, and how it might feel to have Yamamoto peel them off; replace cotton with hot, wet lips.

Someone was walking down the street, conspicuous because Gokudera had picked a quiet part of town and no-one had walked by since long before sunset. It was Yamamoto, and Gokudera knew this not because of the length of stride, or the direction he was coming from, or any other sort of deductive reasoning. He knew because Yamamoto existed to annoy the fuck out of him, and only Yamamoto would ever interrupt him while he was sulking in a bus shelter.

“Go away,” he said, when Yamamoto perched on the bench above him.

“I called the insurance company and they said your apartment wasn’t ready until tomorrow,” he said, nudging Gokudera’s knee with his foot. “I guess you got confused.”

“No I am not confused.” Gokudera snapped. “I am not confused, I am just fed up of living in your stupid house with you crowding round me all the time.”

He hadn’t meant to say it so loud, but it seemed to rattle in the shelter and echo down the street. Yamamoto stopped moving his foot, but didn’t respond, and that was it - that was the dangerous thing. Because Yamamoto not responding left Gokudera with a lot of silent space to start filling with his own ridiculous babble.

“Seriously, why are you always sitting so close and grabbing me and getting in my way? I hate it when you get close to me, I hate spending all this time with you. I can’t think, it drives me crazy, you drive me crazy, I wish you would just go away!”

Gokudera clamped his teeth down on the rest, folding his shaking hands into the front of his jacket. The silence thrummed between them, Gokudera felt it grow tighter and tighter until he almost couldn’t stand it.

Then Yamamoto burst into laughter.

At first Gokudera thought he was mocking him, but there was a rough edge to it, like Yamamoto wasn’t quite in control. Gokudera pushed his hood back and looked up, and that was about the point that he got it, put the pieces together. Yamamoto was about as frustrated and confused by all this as he was.

It wasn’t fair, Gokudera didn’t want to share this with him like they shared a bedroom and a bathroom and an ambition. He shared too much with Yamamoto already, they were too close, tied together too tightly. It was embarrassing, and Gokudera squeezed his eyes shut.

“Wow,” Yamamoto said eventually, breathlessly. “I really didn’t know if it was just me or not.”

“Whatever, baseball nut. It is just you.”

“It totally isn’t,” Yamamoto said, and suddenly Gokudera was being hauled up by one arm, legs stiff and numb from being wedged in for so long. Gokudera had spent so much effort trying not to look at Yamamoto, that being forced to face him and stare at his flushed, unreadable face hit almost like a physical shock.

Who was this person? How had he managed to wriggle far enough under Gokudera’s skin that just a glance at his face made Gokudera shiver?

“Damn it,” Gokudera bit out, ashamed. Yamamoto had a rough grip on both of his arms now, and he wasn’t smiling anymore, not really. Yamamoto’s mouth was just open, and in the lurid glow from the street lamp the inside of his bottom lip looked very red. They were tipping over a precipice, the two of them, and every sound they made, every fractional twitch of their faces felt like the shifting of their centre of gravity.

Gokudera didn’t move forward, the world shifted towards him, and Yamamoto with it. He didn’t realise or think to move out of the way until it was much too late and Yamamoto’s mouth was against his, hot and shivering. It felt so strange, finally feeling the familiar curve of Yamamoto’s smile rather than seeing it. It felt so dangerous, pressing into the kiss until their teeth knocked. Gokudera slid his tongue along the inside of Yamamoto’s bottom lip, impossibly smooth.

“Hah,” Yamamoto exhaled as he opened his mouth, and after that it was hotter; closer. Gokudera didn’t know what to do with his hands, held them up to hover over Yamamoto’s shoulders. He could hear the wet sounds of their mouths moving together, sinking into a rhythm that wasn’t steady but urgent, rushing like his heartbeat.

Yamamoto stumbled to his feet, the increase in height tilting Gokudera’s head back, until the street lamp shone under the rim of his closed eye, catching in his lashes. When had he closed his eyes? He wasn’t sure, and Yamamoto was pushing forward, pressing him slow and steady against the plastic wall of the bus shelter, far too much of them touching suddenly.

Tension ran through all of Yamamoto that Gokudera could feel; starting at his lips, taut down his neck and arms to his fists, closed tight around Gokudera’s wrists. Gokudera’s hands were on Yamamoto’s chest now, and he squeezed his eyes even tighter closed, because he was afraid that if he opened them or pulled away, they would stop, and this was far too good to stop.

Gokudera thought about the technique he had developed; the way the explosions had rippled across the air. His apartment had exploded and created something similar, a chain reaction, and this was how it ended. Like all explosions tended to be, making out with Yamamoto in a bus shelter was beautiful, deadly. The rush it gave Gokudera was heady.

Yamamoto made to pull back, but Gokudera wound him back in before there was more than a foot between their mouths. If they stopped, he wouldn’t allow himself to continue, not if he saw all of Yamamoto’s stupid face, or heard his stupid laugh.

Yamamoto squeezed his wrists, and wrenched away. He backed up a few slow steps. Their shadows were still merged across the floor of the bus shelter, the light warm and yellow around them.

Fuck. Yamamoto’s mouth was still open, red and wanting. He didn’t say a word, and neither did Gokudera, too wound up to speak, and too tangled to walk away. He wanted more, all the unfolded bits of Yamamoto he had already seen while living with him. He wanted to touch them now, and it felt like now that he was close enough to do it, there was no going back.

“Hayato,” Yamamoto said hoarsely, and Gokudera made a frustrated noise, lunging forward. He grabbed for something, just to sink his claws in, making a fist in Yamamoto’s shirt, dragging him from the shelter.

They only made it one block before Yamamoto got close enough to kiss him again, and they walked the whole way home like that, stumbling over each other, seesawing between the need to _move_ and the need to _taste_.

\---

Gokudera woke up to the noise of Mr. Yamamoto clattering about in the kitchen downstairs. He didn’t have a clue why the old idiot needed to make so much noise, Gokudera knew perfectly well how poised and silent he could be. It was just like Yamamoto himself, to hide all that power and grace behind a stupid, obnoxious front.

It was warm, and Gokudera didn’t want to move. The sun was soaking into his skin, and as he opened his eyes, he saw it falling across the cluttered floor of Yamamoto’s room. The floor he should have been sleeping on. With a sinking sense of dread, Gokudera took in the rest of the room.

The door was only half closed, Yamamoto’s sweater wedged on the runners, sleeve trailing out from where he had been furiously tugging it off. The chair at his desk was overturned, and his schoolbooks scattered around it. The paper front of the bedside cabinet was kicked in, and Gokudera’s shoe was wedged in the wreckage.

What the hell had he been thinking? Gokudera flushed bright red, worming away from the hot weight of Yamamoto behind him. He remembered how it had felt standing in that bus shelter, and it seemed like another world, like someone else had been wearing his skin. Why had it seemed inevitable then? That he and Yamamoto would end up like this?

Shamal had once told him that flirting with a woman was like fighting, that the circling of opponents didn’t just happen in the field of battle. At the time Gokudera had dismissed it as just another one of his perverted ramblings. But then Gokudera and Yamamoto had been circling for a while now, and while he didn’t want to admit that he had any tie with the baseball-head, a circle didn’t exactly go anywhere but around, did it?

Fuck it all. Gokudera shifted, kicking away the covers and sitting up. For once, Yamamoto seemed to be worn out, sleeping with that exhausted smile on his mug, as if he had been playing a match the night before instead of going down on Gokudera and making him spit swear words as he came. It wasn’t fair how much power he had. If Gokudera had his way, no-one in the world would be able to have that much control over another person, the way Yamamoto controlled him.

He had looked up, as he wrapped his mouth around Gokudera’s cock, and his eyes had looked as dark and fierce as they did when he had been angry; that perfect, beautiful thing Gokudera had been looking for all this time.

Gokudera still had one sock on, and he was careful as he stood to find the other one. It was in his shoe, and his underwear were near the bed, his jeans crumpled by the door. His shirt was in the hall, and he dressed quickly there, embarrassed by the trail of destruction they had left behind.

Neither Yamamoto noticed him leave.

\---

By the time school started that morning, Gokudera had spent a pleasant enough hour at Tsuna’s listening to Reborn lecturing on handguns while eating breakfast and surreptitiously dropping grains of rice into Lambo’s sticky hair. No-one had asked any questions when he had shown up, let alone Mrs. Sawada, who had seemed very happy to see him.

“You’re hardly ever around anymore, Gokudera,” she told him, as he and Tsuna headed out to school. She straightened his collar and he let her, because she was Tsuna’s mother, and he loved her for that. “You should come more often, and bring Yamamoto too!”

Gokudera wondered exactly when Yamamoto had become his responsibility anyway. He spent most of the journey to school glowering over that thought, and wondering what kind of greeting he was going to get after his sleep-and-run performance.

“Did something happen?” Tsuna asked, looking a little like he didn’t want to know the answer.

I made out with Yamamoto in a bus shelter, staggered back home with him and we ended up exchanging blowjobs in the wreckage we left of his bedroom, Gokudera didn’t say. Instead he just viciously kicked a stone to unleash some of his anger before forcing the brightest smile he could onto his face.

“Nothing Tenth! Nothing at all!”

\---

Yamamoto was five minutes late for registration, but he didn’t seem fazed at all. He greeted Gokudera just as he always did, made no reference to the night before, said nothing incriminating, and spent most of the day acting as if nothing had happened at all. It was perfect, and Gokudera was beginning to think Yamamoto might just be stupid enough to think the whole thing was just a dream.

His hopes were dashed at the end of the day. Yamamoto waited until Tsuna had been diverted away by Ryohei and Kyoko, then turned to Gokudera with a smile that was entirely different from his usual gormless grin.

“You left this,” he said, holding out Gokudera’s black T-shirt, stretched from when they had tugged it off, scrabbling fingers over the thin material. Everything flooded back over Gokudera, and he barely had the focus to reach out and take it. He knew what Yamamoto tasted like now, how his teeth felt against skin, the noises he made.

“Whatever,” Gokudera snapped, a bit louder than he had meant to. “My new place is ready, so I’ll see you whenever.”

Yamamoto didn’t seem to care much, and Gokudera wondered if one night had been enough to sort out all his ‘it was nice having you’ and ’I thought it was just me’ nonsense. Gokudera hoped so, because he wasn’t doing that again.

\---

The new apartment was nice, slightly bigger than his previous one, and with freshly painted walls and new furniture. Gokudera hung his paltry remainder of clothes in the wardrobe, set out the few new belongings that the insurance company had replaced.

He sat on his new sofa, and was just contemplating wasting his time on some stupid homework when the buzzer rang.

“Is this the right place?” someone who was unmistakably Yamamoto asked.

“How would I know?” Gokudera snapped. “I don’t know what you’re looking for.”

“Oh,” even through the static crackle of the intercom, Yamamoto’s voice sounded low and private. “I was looking for you.”

Gokudera let him in, only because he knew from experience that yelling at Yamamoto in person would be far more satisfying. When Yamamoto ducked through the door, hair damp from the rain and another of those private, careful smiles on his face though, Gokudera didn’t have it in him to stay mad.

“Wow, nice place. Seems a bit sparse though!” Yamamoto wandered around uninvited, poking through the drawers in the kitchen, and peering out the window.

“I only just moved in, idiot,” Gokudera left him to it, because he didn’t know what to say, now that they were alone again properly. The last time that had happened they had been naked, and Gokudera was pretty sure he had done something embarrassing near the end, like moan Yamamoto’s name.

“My dad made me bring sushi,” Yamamoto called, and Gokudera heard the rustling of plastic bags. After a moment, he came through with a plate and Gokudera took it silently. “Although I thought you were fed up of sushi,” Yamamoto added, voice low.

His smile said something like _I know you, I see right through you_ and Gokudera turned down to the food to hide the shiver that gave him. It felt like Yamamoto might have finally got a clue, or perhaps had had one all along.

“I am, but whatever,” Gokudera said swiftly. As usual the sushi was delicious, and as usual he took every tasty mouthful as a personal insult. Yamamoto stretched out his legs as he ate his portion, taking up too much space, filling up the apartment when it had been so nice and empty.

“I liked last night,” Yamamoto said, just when Gokudera thought they might be done. “Are we going to do it again?”

He said it in the careless, upfront way that he might have asked what homework needed doing, but Gokudera knew he cared about the answer. It seemed like Yamamoto had figured Gokudera out, knew how to read him, but Gokudera realised now that it went both ways. For Yamamoto to get that far, he had needed to let Gokudera in as well.

What a stupidly big sacrifice to make, Gokudera thought. Only someone as idiotic as Yamamoto would have thought it worth the risk.

“You know it’s not a game, right?” Gokudera asked, rolling the storm ring around on his finger. Yamamoto laughed, an awkward little exhale of air. It didn’t matter what Gokudera meant, the Vongola family, or just what was growing up between them now. Yamamoto treated everything like a game, something he could just take his uniform off after and go back to normal.

“Yeah I know,” Yamamoto said, then took the sushi plate from Gokudera. For a moment, Gokudera thought he had said the wrong thing, that Yamamoto was going to leave him be. Yamamoto just put the plate down on the brand new coffee table and leaned over for a kiss.

He tasted like sushi, which was expected and not as gross as Gokudera would have admitted. It was just like before, as if Yamamoto had the key to some switch inside Gokudera, and all he had to do was part his lips, slide a palm over Gokudera’s hip and Gokudera became a shivering useless wreck.

It wasn’t so desperate though, not with the rain whispering gently outside. Yamamoto moved more like the forms of Shigure Souen, a steady progression from one thing to the next, hands slipping under Gokudera’s T-shirt, lips tracing a pattern down his throat. Gokudera didn’t know how to do that, so instead he just tugged at the buttons of Yamamoto’s school shirt until they burst, and he could bite and kiss at the skin beneath them, feeling the heavy thud of Yamamoto’s pulse all around him.

They christened Gokudera’s new bed, and as Yamamoto arched over him, pressing his erection down into the circle of their hands, mouth loose around his moans, the rain ring hung in the space between them, catching the light. Gokudera couldn’t move without a response from Yamamoto, couldn’t tighten his fingers without a gasp, couldn’t twitch his hips without a groan. They were so tangled up in each other Gokudera had to close his eyes, because if he looked at Yamamoto any longer he was afraid they would just become the same person.

“Takeshi,” he said, roughly, because it was the only thing he remembered how to say, and it was all that was needed anyway. Yamamoto groaned, ducking his head and kissing near Gokudera’s mouth, the stretch of skin beside his nose, up to the line of his cheekbone, just beneath his eye.

The one time they had fought, Yamamoto had accused him of not understanding what teamwork was, what it meant to be part of a team. They had never had much problem fighting side by side though, Gokudera remembered, and this was why. He might not have understood teamwork, but he understood Yamamoto, because they fit together like this, hot and shaking and unspeakable.

In the morning, Yamamoto stayed and broke Gokudera’s brand new espresso machine.

 

\---

It was finally really getting to be summer, all the fits and starts of rain and cool weather settling down after a long spring. Gokudera was fond of this time of year, when the sun really began to bake the tarmac in the middle of the day. It never got as hot as Italy, but it was close enough, and he was getting to wear his new, retro sunglasses that he found on ebay for a totally ridiculous price.

Tsuna was wrestling his sweater off, his sky ring catching on the wool and causing him difficulty. When he was finished, his hair was a disaster and Gokudera smiled at it, flipping his cigarette between his finger tips.

“Are you coming round to do the homework assignment?” Tsuna asked, tugging at his hair ruefully.

“I need to pick something up from Yamamoto’s first,” Gokudera replied, rummaging in his pocket for his lighter. He came up with a stick of gum and a stick of something slightly more explosive. If Yamamoto had hidden it again in another misguided attempt to get him to quit, Gokudera would have something to say.

Tsuna was looking at him oddly.

“Gokudera,” he began, “Your new apartment was ready like, a month ago, right?”

“Mm,” No lighter anywhere, not in any of his hidden pockets. The baseball freak was going to pay.

“So why do you still spend all your time at Yamamoto’s? Yamamoto said you were sleeping there the other night.”

Gokudera blinked. The idiot had said _what_?

“Tenth!” He bellowed, making Tsuna flinch. “You have to help me! It’s that Yamamoto and his dad, forcing me to stay over all the time. They make me eat stupid sushi, and watch stupid baseball, and then when it’s too late for me to go home they make me sleep over!”

Tsuna didn’t even look slightly convinced, and Gokudera just smiled, because it was getting to the stage where his life was so ridiculous there wasn’t much else to do. Maybe that was how Yamamoto felt all the time. He just shoved his unlit cigarette into his pocket, and turned and headed for home.

**Author's Note:**

> 10/09/2008 - betaed by Pollinia.


End file.
